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Nikos Maziotis is a Greek anarchist who has been imprisoned several times for taking part in social struggles against the capitalist State.

In 1999 Nikos was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the attempted bombing of the Ministry of Industry, a solidarity action with the insurrectionary struggle of the villagers of Strymonikos against a gold mine.

During his trial anarchists attacked the riot police who would not let them go inside the court. Policemen were beaten up and injured and forced to run inside and close the gate, as stones fell on their heads, cars and inside the yard of the court house.

Revolutionary solidarity actons with Maziotis forced the Greek state to lower his sentence first to only five years and then to merely three.

"Before the Maziotis' trial a condominium floor at Hippokratous St. with offices of judicial clerks and a tuition center was set on fire. The organization 'Pirines Exegertikis Drasis' (Revolting Action Nuclei) 'phones' to the leftist newspaper 'Eleftherotypia', threatens that 'the judges and the future lawyers of the state took a very good lesson of what they will face in their career' and asks to 'free Maziotis'..."

In the Norwegian summer of 1993, the second wave of black metal was still in its ultra-violent infancy, and only a handful of bands were actively exploring the parameters of what was then an obscure and distinctly Scandinavian art form. Upon its release in 1995, In the Nightside Eclipse established Emperor as the reigning masters of a more complex, atmospheric style of “symphonic black metal,” but before the album was even mixed, half the band was in prison on charges ranging from arson to murder. The recording sessions at Grieghallen Studios in Bergen were completed in July 1993, just a month before black metal hysteria would seize Scandinavia in the grip of screaming newspaper headlines detailing the vicious murder of Mayhem founder/guitarist Øystein Aarseth (a.k.a. Euronymous) by Burzum mastermind and onetime Mayhem session bassist Varg Vikernes (a.k.a. Count Grishnackh). A Pandora’s Box of criminal activity in the black metal underground had sprung wide open. Shortly after Vikernes’ apprehension, Emperor guitarist Samoth was arrested for church-burning and Emperor drummer Bård Eithun (a.k.a. Faust) was arrested for killing a man in the Lillehammer Olympic Park—a deed he had committed almost a year prior to the recording of In the Nightside Eclipse. Released from prison in December 2002 after serving nine years and four months’ time, Faust joins fellow ex-Emperors Samoth, Ihsahn (guitar/vocals/keys) and Tchort (bass) on the eve of a sudden Emperor reunion (featuring Samoth, Ihsahn and longtime Emperor drummer Trym) to recount the making of one of the most historically fascinating and sonically influential albums in the annals of extreme metal.Some argue that without the controversy of events outside the music, this album would be taken as a basic/standard Black Metal workout, nothing special and doomed to obscurity. I would argue the opposite, as De Mysteriis, just batters the air and subsequently lays barren any preconceptions of ‘the sub-standard’ to dust.It is far cry from the bands 1987 debut ‘Deathcrush’, a toneless adaptation of Venom and Hellhammer, and consisting of all the limitations of an inexperienced first release. By contrast the follow up to the virtually immaculate, De Mysteriis, was Wolfs Lair Abyss [1997] and A Grand Declaration of War [2000] were pale comparisons, lacking personality and depth, albeit strong quality Black Metal releases.The release of the Ordo AD Chao album has reasserted the bands former greatness, having captured the very wrought staleness of De Mysteriis, and harnessing the bands most bleak sounding opus since that classic debut.

Here's a critical essay about Hitler, Himmler & Nazi Occult, primarily looking at the Tibet connection. You may not agreed with its premise, but it is a thorough piece, giving voice to many angles.

FASCIST OCCULTISM AND ITS CLOSE RELATIONSHIP TO BUDDHIST TANTRISM

by Victor and Victoria Trimondi

Visionary fascism was, and indeed still is, exceptionally deeply fascinated by the Buddhocratic form of state. In the late thirties (as the various fascist systems bloomed in Europe and the whole world) Spencer Chapman, a traveler in Tibet, wrote that even in the days of the dictators one can only be amazed at what uncontested power the Dalai Lama possesses” (Chapman, 1940, p. 192). The idea of kingship of the world, the uniting of spiritual and secular power in a single person, the ideology of war in the Shambhala myth, the uncompromisingly androcentric orientation, the tantric vision of the feminine, the whole occult ambience and much more besides were specifically adopted by several fascist ideologists and welded together into an aggressive myth. As we shall soon see, entire fascist systems are based upon the adoption of Tibetan/tantric doctrines.

[...]

It is thus not at all the case that there is no historical foundation for hypothesizing an occult Nazi — Tibet connection, even if it is publicly denied by one of the protagonists of the “SS Schäfer Expedition”, Bruno Beger (Lange 1998, p. 6. Nevertheless, an occult interconnection between the SS and Lamaist Tibet of the dimensions in which it is currently portrayed in a large number of neo-fascist and esoteric publications has to be described as a post facto construction. This construction could, however, we repeat, fall back on an esoteric ambience in which Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, and other high-ranking Nazis moved. Thus the well-known, historically proven material has at any rate been sufficient to create new and very effective myths. In the Nazi- Tibet connection , we are thus dealing with a process of myth creation and not a historical set of events. In such processes, there is a blending of historical facts, the stuff of traditional sagas, straining for effect, and imaginary, visionary, religious, fantastic, and personal elements until it all binds into a resistant pattern and anchors itself as such in a culture. It is not unusual for different mythologemes to become fused, and this is exactly, as we will show, what has happened in the case of the Nazi — Tibet connection. Here, racist Nazi myths have been fused with elements of the Tibetan Shambhala myth and with sexual magic practices from Tantric Buddhism.

In this process of myth construction it should also not be underestimated that the meetings known to have occurred between the Dalai Lama and former SS members (Schäfer, Harrer, Beger) have occult significance alone by virtue of the fact that anybody who mentally negotiates an esoteric network interprets a meeting with the Dalai Lama as an occult event.

The XIV. Dalai Lama between two former SS-men, Bruno Beger on his right behind and Heinrich Harrer on his left behind. The other persons, who visited Tibet before 1950, are: Mr Kazi Sonam Togpyal, Mr Robert Ford, Mrs Ronguy Collectt (daughter of Sir Charles Bell), Mrs Joan Mary Jehu, Mr Archibald Jack and Prof. Fosco Maraini.

In the meantime an enormous amount of literature about a suspected Nazi — Tibet connection has appeared, some examples of which we briefly introduce here:

In 1958 an American publisher released the book The Lightning and the Sun, by Savitri Devi (“Hitler’s Priestess”), which presents Adolf Hitler as an avatar (an incarnation) of the sun god, alongside Akhenaton and Genghis Khan. Devi does not mention a Nazi — Tibet connection, but introduces the “avatar principle” into the myth building surrounding Hitler that is seized upon by later authors so as to present the Führer as an incarnation from the kingdom of Agarthi/Shambhala (see Miguel Serrano in this regard).

In their best-seller The Dawn of Magic, Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwells (1962) first claim that the Shambhala/Agarthi myth strongly influenced the founders of the national socialist movement.

Robert Charroux (Verratene Geheimnisse [“Betrayed Secrets”]) presumes that Lama priests had gained influence over Hitler and worked on “ a plan for exercising control over the world which was thoroughly the equal of that of the Germans “ (Charroux, 170, p. 258).

The anti-fascist myth researcher Friedrich Doucet (Im Banne des Mythos [In the Thrall of Myth], 1979) discusses “psycho-techniques of the monks and abbots in the Lama monasteries of Tibet” with which leading national socialist figures were manipulated.

In the 80s, two books by the Chilean Miguel Serrano appeared (El Cordon Dorado [The Golden Ribbon] and Adolf Hitler el último Avatara [Adolf Hitler: The Final Avatar]). Both texts form the basis for “esoteric Hitlerism”. One of Serrano’s central themes is the relationship between sexual magic and political power (especially national socialism). The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, whom Serrano has met several times, is woven by the author into the creation of neo-fascist myths around Hitler.

According to Jan van Helsing (Geheimgesellschaften und ihre Macht ... [“Secret Societies and their Power”], 1993), Tibetan monks worked together with Templar Knights who were organized in the highest lodge of the “black sun” on the establishment of the Third Reich. The secret order had (and still has) an important base underground in the Himalayas. The ruler of the underground kingdom is said to be “Rigden Iyepo”, the king of the world, with his representative on the surface, the Dalai Lama.

In Die schwarze Sonne von Tashi Lhunpo [The Black Sun of Tashi Lhunpo] (1996), McCloud reports on the survival of the national socialist Thule group in Tibet . They are the followers of a “sun oracle” there.

For Wilhelm Landig (Götzen gegen Thule ... [Idols against Thule], n.d.), Tibet is also “the realm of the black sun! It is the meeting point of the esoteric circles of the Schutzstaffel [the SS], whose knowledge Mr. Himmler also knew about but did not share.”

In his novel (The Black Sun…, 1997), Peter Moon reiterates the decisive influence of Tibetan Lamas on National Socialism and extends it with new images. He takes the side of the old Tibetan Bon religion, and accuses the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism of religious oppression.

“Why”, Martin Brauen, a pro-Lamaist expert on Tibet, asks in light of this considerable and by no means complete literature list, “does Tibet arouse the interest of the neo-fascists so much?” What makes Tibet so attractive for them? What is so fascinating about the Shambhala myth that it draws into its thrall both those who cultivate and those who combat it?” (Brauen, 2000, p. 93). He cannot answer this question. But in order to be able invert the fact that national socialism had an occult relationship to Tibetan Buddhism into its complete opposite, he foregrounds an anti-Lamaist faction within the German right-wing. It was precisely the Nazis, Brauen says, who denounced the Lamas and the Tibetans as “Untermenschen” (subhumans).

Among the anti–Dalai Lama and anti-Tibet literature are works by S. Ipares (Geheime Weltmächte [Secret World Powers], 1937), who was influenced by the orientalist Albert Grünwedel. In his book, the author talks of an occult hierarchia ordinis of the Lamaist theocracy, which invisibly influences and steers the East.

J. Strunk’s arguments (Zu Juda und Rom — Tibet, [To Juda and Rome — Tibet], 1937) are more far reaching; he tries to uncover a conspiracy of an international ecclesiastical elite (with members from all the world religions) with the living Buddha, the Dalai Lama from Lhasa as their visible head. “What there are of organizations and new spiritual currents running alongside and in all directions nearly always end up on the ‘roof of the world’, in a Lama temple, once one has progressed through Jewish and Christian lodges” (Strunk, 1937, p. 2.

In the same year (1937) Fritz Wilhelmy published the piece Asekha. Der Kreuzzug der Bettelmönche [Asekha: The Crusade of the Mendicant Monks]. In it “Tibetan Buddhism … [is] openly appointed to play a more than mysterious role in the great global hustle and bustle of suprastate pullers of strings” (Wilhelmy 1937, p.17)

General Ludendorff and his wife likewise took to the field with great vigor against the “Asian priests” and warned that the Tibetan Lamas had emplaced themselves at the head of Jewish and Jesuit secret orders (Europa den Asiatenpriestern? [Europe of the Asian priests)], 1941).

Clearly the most prominent of the anti-Lamaist Nazi faction was the racialist Alfred Rosenberg, who in his seminal work Der Mythos des 20. Jahrhundert [The Myth of the 20th Century] made the battle between the priests and the warrior caste into the primal conflict of the history of the world. The Tibetan lamas appear here as the representatives of a decadent Asian Catholicism.

The problem with the construction of a fascist anti-Lamaism lies in the fact that apart from Alfred Rosenberg the right-wing authors cited definitely did not occupy positions of power like those of Himmler, the SS, and the Ahnenerbe project. “Hitler’s mythologist” (Rosenberg) was cut dead by Himmler and barely taken seriously by Hitler. The Ludendorff’s fell out of favor with the Führer. In contrast, the SS with their

grim report circulating in the Kremlin today written by Russia’s Northern Fleet is reporting that the United States has ordered a complete media blackout over North Korea’s torpedoing of the giant Deepwater Horizon oil platform owned by the World’s largest offshore drilling contractor Transocean that was built and financed by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd., that has caused great loss of life, untold billions in economic damage to the South Korean economy, and an environmental catastrophe to the United States.

On the night of April 20th the North Korean Mini Submarine manned by these “suicidal” 17th Sniper Corps soldiers attacked the Deepwater Horizon with what are believed to be 2 incendiary torpedoes causing a massive explosion and resulting in 11 workers on this giant oil rig being killed outright. Barely 48 hours later, on April 22nd , this North Korean Mini Submarine committed its final atrocity by exploding itself directly beneath the Deepwater Horizon causing this $1 Billion oil rig to sink beneath the seas and marking 2010’s celebration of Earth Day with one of the largest environmental catastrophes our World has ever seen.—The TexasFred Blog

response to a major public spending deficit, Greece's socialist government wants to impose a tax on the assets of the country's Orthodox Church, the Church of Greece (CoG). But the powerful institution, which is Greece's largest property owner and a state within the state, has turned a deaf ear to the government's demands.

In the wake of the socialist government's attempts to impose a one-off tax of approximately 600,000 euros on CoG property, relations between the CoG and the state—two institutions that are not separated—have reached a new low, with the CoG simply refusing to pay. "The Church of Greece contributes to the state when it works. There is no reason for any other contribution," announced Bishop Theoklitos of Ioannina [in the northwest of the country]. The Bishop who chairs the CoG's financial affairs committee insists that "the tax would encumber some members of the the clergy with excessive debt." He sees no reason for the tax, "because there is no war or disaster that requires our contribution. Instead, we are being called on to contribute because of failed economic policies. We refuse to foot the bill for other people's mistakes!"

Theoklitos also pointed out that in the past, "the state has already seized CoG assets on several occasions"—most recently in 1952, when a contract stipulating the obligations of both parties, which is still in force, was signed between the two institutions. As it stands, the latest estimates from the Bank of Greece, evaluate the CoG's property portfolio—which represents just four percent of the holdings it had 60 years ago—at over 700 million euros, and its share portfolio at nine million euros.

In Greece, priests are public servants

Today, the state is once again attempting to tax the clergy with divisive results. The CoG is not refusing to pay taxes, but insisting that taxes be established on cultivated or serviceable land. The government's decree "is a request for charity, but our institution is not simply a charity," explained Theoklitos. The clergy also believe that the initiative is unfair, because it fails to take into account the fact that "the Church operates 800 establishments for the needy."

The battle lines have been drawn: the CoG will not provide charity for the state, and this is the underlying reason for its refusal to pay the one-off tax. But it may not be enough to fend off a further attack from the government, which is having difficulty making ends meet. The Minister of Finance has described the situation of the country, where the public spending deficit has reached 12% of GDP, as "critical." The CoG is still Greece's largest property owner, and as such, it will remain in the frontline. Like his predecessor Costas Simitis—who overcame opposition from the clergy in 1999 when mention of religious beliefs was removed from Greek identity cards—socialist Prime Minister, Georges Papandréou, is determined not to shy away from conflict with the CoG.

Perhaps it would be preferable to "separate the church from the state," said Bishop Theoklitos. "We might not have as many priests, but we would have priests and not public service employees [the clergy of the CoG are paid by the state]. But we should not be forced to take all the blame for the fact that politics have been forced on to the pulpit," he concluded. However, a definitive separation between the CoG and the state is not likely to happen anytime soon, and until then, the debate will remain ongoing.

Who are the Conspiracy of Fire Cells? (Fire Nuclei, Synomosia Pyrinon tis Fotias -- SPF -- Συνωμοσία Πυρήνων της Φωτιάς) updated 31 Oct 2009The Greek educational system pours thousands of aspiring artists into a status-obsessed, highly politicized society that cannot afford to employ them. Banding together in collective contempt for capitalism and consumer society is one short-term solution. Members cut themselves loose from society's more onerous chains and hang out with age-mates in an abandoned building, ideally somewhere near Exarcheia, the anarchists' traditional neighborhood.

The anti-authority groups function essentially as artists' collectives, maintaining an inexpensive communal lifestyle through intermittent work, grants from tolerant relatives, or bank robbery. Within that counterculture, anti-authority violence is a rite of passage, multi-media performance art, and a chance for young males to rank themselves against their peers in an informal but intense status competition. Despite a rhetoric of self-liberation through destruction, the anarchist/antiauthority movement is too small, too anti-hierarchical, and (usually) too respectful of comrades' moral redlines to wage serious war on the system.

Since the end of the 1970s, antiauthority groups in Athens routinely engage in stone-throwing, window-smashing, and fire-raising whenever a protest has attracted sufficient critical mass to take shelter behind. On non-demonstration days, an uneasy ceasefire prevails, with police and "anarchists" avoiding each other's territory. When members or friends are arrested by police, or when a group's territory is infringed, that group retaliates by humiliating the police.

A small group on motorcycles, with an expansive view of what constitutes legitimate targets, can quickly prove the powerlessness of the police to defend private property or even their own police stations. Apart from gasoline bottles, the usual tool is a gazaki (in simplest form a propane gas canister wrapped in a petrol-soaked rag) placed to destroy a car or ATM. The better-organized groups publish short proclamations on sympathetic web sites to explain those attacks.

The "Conspiracy of Fire Cells" (Synomosia Pyrinon tis Fotias -- SPF) was an attempt to increase the political impact of anti-authority violence. SPF appeared on January 21, 2008, with a barrage of 12 gas canister attacks against widely dispersed banks, car dealers, and the Public Power Company in Athens and Thessaloniki, during a half-hour period just after midnight. The declared purpose was solidarity with Thessaloniki anarchist Vangelis Voutsatzis, arrested in November 2007 for gazaki attacks.

For the next 20 months, SPF averaged one arson wave a month, usually in Athens and Thessaloniki simultaneously. The number and coordination of SPF's attacks - presumably six or more 4-6-person teams on motorbikes - alarmed police. SPF's retaliatory capabilities were an additional reason for Greek police to think twice about arresting "anarchists" for any but the most blatant and serious crimes.

Solidarity with local and foreign anarchists and hatred of banks, police, prisons, the army, and consumer society are the themes of SPF's 22 (as of 30 October 2009) extant proclamations. SPF is uninterested in class struggle and the quest for a future utopia. The proclamation writers embrace urban warfare not as a means to an end but as an end in itself, resistance as art. Modern consumer society is "slow suicide." "The revolutionary element of arson is not only in its material destruction but also in the transgressiveness of the act."

The December 2008 events overwhelmed the anti-authority movement with new recruits hungry for a revolutionary program. Forced to broaden its aims, SPF pledged to join with other groups and wage a "new, rabid (lyssasmeno) urban warfare ... now and until our last breath." The next wave of gazakia, on February 11, 2009, was the first SPF attack to capture major public attention, because it served the media's breathless narrative of reborn Greek terrorism. SPF struck targets with (loose) connections to the 17N prosecution, and dedicated those attacks, in a long, newly sophisticated proclamation, to jailed 17N spokesman Dimitris Koufodinas.

In May 2009 SPF escalated its capabilities with its first use of home-made explosives, causing minor damage to two police stations under construction in Athens and Thessaloniki. The proclamation was a more mature theoretical tract on upgrading "revolutionary terrorism" (terorismos, a word other groups rigorously avoid). In June, a small time bomb (home-made gunpowder in a glued-shut pressure cooker) was hung from a staircase outside the home of ex-deputy minister of public order Hinofotis. SPF and "Nihilist Fraction" jointly claimed responsibility. On September 2, a similar bomb caused trivial damage to the heavily-guarded Ministry of Macedonia-Thrace in Thessaloniki. Another damaged the door of PASOK MP candidate Louka Katseli on September 23.

A presumed SPF safe house in Halandri was already being watched by police before the Katseli bomb. When police raided the house that same afternoon, they found one ready pressure-cooker bomb and various bomb-making scraps. Four young people, age 20-21, were arrested. One is a self-proclaimed revolutionary anarchist, Panagiotis ( Panos) Masouras. The others are students from prosperous backgrounds: Haris Hatzimichelakis, the owner of the apartment; his cousin Manos Giospas, a design student who lives with his mother upstairs; Manos's girlfriend, a photography student. Six others, sought on the basis of fingerprints found there, have been hiding from police since the date of the raid. Police are detaining the three young men in in hopes the guilty will confess to spare (probably) innocent friends years in prison as members of a terrorist organization.

On October 2, 2009 SPF and "Nihilist Fraction" struck back with another pressure cooker bomb, that destroyed two motorbikes and broke windows while Prime Minister Karamanlis was giving his final election speech in the Pedio tou Areos 150 meters away. Their purpose was to deny the government any electoral benefit, proving the four arrests were not a breakthrough against SPF. A similar bomb protesting the educational system did minor damage to the entrance to the unguarded apartment building of MEP (former ND Education Minister) Marietta Giannakou on October 30, 2009.

On December 27, 2009, a four-person team struck again, with a much more powerful bomb that destroyed the entrance of a building on Syngrou Blvd. housing the Ethniki Asfalistiki insurance company and a National Bank of Greece branch. A warning call to a newspaper reduced the risk of casualties. The proclamation claiming credit was signed Guerilla Team of Terrorists/SPF (ΑΝΤΑΡΤΙΚΗ ΟΜΑΔΑ ΤΕΡΡΟΡΙΣΤΩΝ - ΣΥΝΩΜΟΣΙΑ ΠΥΡΗΝΩΝ ΤΗΣ ΦΩΤΙΑΣ). The group claimed to have gained access to powerful explosives through cooperation with other revolutionary comrades. This new combination of violent anti-consumerist ideology and powerful explosives is alarming.

It may be a mistake to look for a formal membership of SPF. A more likely model is groups of friends, each with a specific set of motivations, that seek the blessing of an original SPF nucleus before using the name. One of SPF's main writers is older than 25, capable of disciplined, analytical Greek and with enough historical knowledge to make valid comparisons with Greece and Italy of the 1980s and 1990s. Others are less mature, more "poetic" in their embrace of a Nietzschean cult of violence:

Links with Other GroupsGreek police routinely try to link armed groups into a single umbrella organization, ignoring the philosophical differences reflected in their manifestos. The upgraded SPF hoped to help form such an umbrella, writing in February 2009 "Here there is no room for agreement or disagreement on political correctness. The important thing is our eyes behind the hoods, shining so beautifully when we fight." SPF announced in May 2009 that it had joined a new "Arsonists' Cooperative." A month later the Cooperative had vanished. However, cooperation with the "Nihilist Fraction" continues. SPF may have absorbed "Gangs of Conscience" (Symmories Syneidisis -SymSyn), which surfaced in March 2008 with a molotov attack on the Aigaleo police station. SymSyn proclaimed the "new urban guerrilla war" in December 2008, but dropped out of sight after its March 3, 2009 torching of two metro trains prompted public fury.

SPF's pressure-cooker bombs resemble four bombs planted by Armed Revolutionary Action (Enopli Epanastatiki Drasi - ENEDRA) in 2007-9. ENEDRA, with its "collective vision" -- a self-governed society in harmony with nature -- would find SPF unpleasantly militarist. The real explosives used in the December 2009 bombing could point to help from Revolutionary Struggle (EA). However, ideological differences would impede close collaboration. EA would be uncomfortable with SPF's nihilism and rejection of class consciousness while SPF would find EA's proclamations unreadable.

Most rebels of Exarcheia lack the sense of long-term mission (and also the memory of Junta-era police torture) that kept traditional leftist revolutionaries like 17N disciplined and vigilant. After the September 23 arrests, it became clear that SPF (or at least its suburban fringe) violated basic security rules of the underground armed struggle: using mobile phones, keeping incriminating materials where they lived, and being conspicuously involved in protests.

By their nature, anti-authority groups that espouse ambitious violence tend to be short-lived. Christos Tsoutsouvis and Mihalis Prekas, still the Greek poster children for "anarchist" violence, undervalued their own lives as well as others'. They were both shot dead by police mere weeks after their organizations were launched in 1985 and 1987 respectively. SPF has gone beyond the territorial/tribal goals of most anarchist groups to challenge the Greek political establishment. The September arrests will probably drive its members underground. If not, SPF is likely to be broken up relatively quickly.

*"Anarchist" is a generic term used by the Greek media and police to refer to ominously dressed youth who congregate in Exarcheia and throw rocks at police. True anarchists (as opposed to children who like to paint the symbol on walls) are a minority in Exarcheia's wide spectrum of anti-establishment ideologies from libertarian socialism to murderous nihilism. Members often use the term "antiexousiastes" (anti-authoritarians).